Following several months of planning, and lots of sweet samplings, the bakery at Squirrel Hill’s Giant Eagle on Murray Avenue plans to be up and running as certified kosher and pareve beginning sometime this spring.

While the bakery will be open on Saturdays, with products available for purchase, no baking will be done in violation of the Sabbath, according to Giant Eagle spokesman Dick Roberts. He said the Va’ad HaKashrus of Pittsburgh will exercise full supervision and certification over the bakery.

The full-service bakery will feature breads, cookies, pastries, turnovers and made-to-order special occasion cakes.

The Murray Avenue store is Giant Eagle’s first venture into kosher baking. For now, there are no plans to convert the bakeries at other Giant Eagle locations to kosher and pareve, and no set plans to distribute baked items elsewhere.

“While we are currently evaluating opportunities to distribute from our Squirrel Hill bakery to other area locations,” Roberts said, “we have no confirmed plans at this time.”

Pittsburgh has had a need for more kosher baked goods since last year’s closing of Simple Treat, which had served the kosher community for about 18 years.

Sweet Tammy’s, a bakery and coffeehouse that opened last fall in Simple Treat’s former storefront, is also certified kosher and pareve.

Murray Avenue Kosher has been shipping baked goods into Pittsburgh from kosher bakeries in other cities such as Cleveland and New York to help fill the void left by Simple Treat.

(Toby Tabachnick can be reached at tobyt@thejewishchronicle.net.)